People and Planet

Question 1

Sustainability may be defined as meeting current production goals without compromising the future in terms of either environmental degradation or resource depletion.

Answer 1

Our modern global economy is consuming finite non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels and mineral reserves many of which will run out this century, causing pollution, making species extinct, and leaving a legacy of an Earth less habitable for future generations.
Intensive agriculture is a major contributor to these unsustainable patterns of consumption and environmental degradation- including depleting and degrading soil at rates far faster than soil formation.

Question 2

People:
The further we look back the faster and more unprecedented we realise human population growth to be
“It is hard for me to comprehend that in the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history” Megan Clarke (2009)

Answer 2

Losing the Earth
Chuch, 2010

Greenhouse gasses
Tilman and Clark 2014

Question 3

There is an 80% probability that the 7.7 billion population will increase to 11 billion (9.6-12.3) by 2100. Much of this increase is expected to happen in Africa.

Answer 3

The latest population projections , contrary to previous estimates indicates that the world population is unlikely to stop growing this century.

Question 4

The global economic system is biased to the rich. The world population is growing- and becoming wealthier- but most people still live on less than $10,000 per year.

Answer 4

60% of the world’s population share 9.4% of global wealth

Question 5

Ecological debt- living beyond our means

Answer 5

“The modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income. I specified three categories of such capital: fossil fuels, the sustainability of nature, and the human substance.” EF Schumacher (1973).

Question 6

“We are estranged from reality and inclined to treat as valueless everything we have not made ourselves.

Far larger is the capital provided by nature and not by humans- and we do not even recognize it as such.”
EF Schumacher (1973)

Answer 6

Because the global economy fails to properly value the Earth’s resources (or people) we don’t manage these resources (and people) in a way that is either economically or environmentally sustainable, (or just).
Key issues
Sustainability
Inter-generational responsibilities and justice
Economic and environmental sustainability
Reduction in waste and improvements in N fertilizer efficiency
Dietary choices- for health and the environment

Question 7

Human-Nature Relationships under strain

Answer 7

‘Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side’.

E.F. Schumacher 1973. Small is Beautiful.

Question 8

Consumerism: I want more and I want it now!

In a 2006 survey 60% of UK residents said they didn’t have enough money to buy what they ‘really need’ Even 50% of those in the highest income bracket said the same. How can such a wealthy society consider itself so needy? Mark Powley 2006 (https://breathenetwork.wordpress.com/)

Answer 8

I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that ‘what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.‘

             EF Schumacher (1977)

Question 9

Rethinking the linear economy to achieve sustainability

Our present consumption behaviour is not sustainable.

Answer 9

Addressing climate change and achieving sustainability in the global economy need recognized as dual imperatives.
Nothing less is required than a complete redesign of our economic system to bring sustainability to the fore. Our politicians are obsessed with the idolatry of ‘economic growth’ we all need to face up to the realities of a finite planet. Unless we cease hell-bent consumption we will deplete and destroy the very substances on which we and future generations depend.

Question 10

Being richer and having more ‘stuff’ does not guarantee the paradise on Earth we would like- but it helps to destroy the Earth and harm society.
Mahatma Ghandi:
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”

Answer 10

The top 1% own 48% of global wealth- but even they aren’t happy. A survey by Boston College of people with average net worth of $78m found that they too were assailed by anxiety, dissatisfaction and loneliness. Many of them reported feeling financially insecure: to reach safe ground they believed, they would need on average, about 25% more money.
George Monbiot
Guardian weekly 24th October 2014

Question 11

Paradox:
No relationship between income and life expectancy between developed countries
But within countries huge effects of relative income and life expectancy

Answer 11

In developed countries the average well-being of society is not dependent on national income and economic growth- but the income differences between individuals matter very much. Increasing income inequality in the UK- the poor are getting poorer and the super-rich richer. (Resolution Foundation)

Question 12

The problem of production

An industrial system which uses 40% of the worlds primary resources to supply less than 6% of the worlds population could be called efficient only if it obtained strikingly successful results in terms of human happiness, well being, culture, peace and harmony.

Answer 12

I do not need to dwell on the fact that the American system fails to do this- or that there are not the slightest prospects it could do if only it achieved a greater rate of growth in production. (E.F. Schumacher 1973)

Question 13

In America men on average spend 65 weeks of their life in prison. Black men on average spend 1 day every 3 weeks in prison. In the US 76% of prisoners reoffend within 5 years. In America prisons are to punish.
I

Answer 13

n Norway people on average spend less than 3 weeks in prison, and less than 20% reoffend.
In Norway prisons are for reintegratiing offenders into society.
(Mike Bernars-Lee 2019) “There is No Planet B.”

Question 14

A new economic model is needed to take care of the Earth and humanity

Answer 14

Small is Beautiful:

The basic message is that man is pulling the Earth and himself out of equilibrium by applying only one test to everything he does: money, profits and therefore giant operations.

We have got to ask instead, what about the cost in human terms, in happiness, health, beauty and conserving the planet?
(Peter Lewis- Daily Mail 1973)

Question 15

A new economic model is needed to take care of the Earth and humanity

We need to develop ‘agricultural production methods which are biologically sound, build up soil fertility, and produce health, beauty and permanence.’

Answer 15

EF Schumacher, 1973.

Schumacher was the President of The Soil Association in the early 1970’s

Question 16

The temperature has now risen outside the range of the present interglacial, and is as warm as the last interglacial when sea level was 6-9 m higher than today.
“Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive implausible clean-up or growing deleterious climate impacts or both”.

Answer 16

Proposed methods of CO2 extraction from air such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) or air capture CO2 have been estimated to cost US $89-535 trillion this century.

Carbon capture by enhanced weathering (e.g. using basalt dust) may cost $52-$480 per tonne of CO2 captured, but part of these costs might be offset by crop yield improvements- but the technology remains untested.

(Royal Society 2018 Greenhouse gas removal report).

Question 17

“Humans are consuming the ecosphere’s wealth faster than the ecosphere can renew itself.
The dominant cultural myth is of global development characterised by unlimited economic expansion.
Humanity is on a collision course with biophysical reality -on a global scale”

Answer 17

(Rees 2003)

Question 18

Better soil and water management
Restoration of degraded agricultural land
Halting deforestation of ecosystems

Answer 18

Carbon pricing

End fossil subsidies

Question 19

Adding nitrogen fertilizer [or use of legumes/compost manure/human excrement] to land that lacks sufficient available nitrogen to give good yields can reduce the need to convert more grassland and forest to crop lands, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer 19

“Five A Day” national campaigns in the USA, the United Kingdom and Germany, seek to encourage consumption of at least five portions of fruit and vegetables each day, following a the World Health Organization recommendation that individuals consume “a minimum of 400 g of fruit and vegetables per day (excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers).”

Question 20

63-70% of adults not meeting 5-a-day target

Answer 20

87% of boys and 93% of girls not meeting 5-a-day target

Many people buy more fruit and veg than they eat-
There is a gap between purchasing and consumption.

Question 21

In the UK we still don’t eat our “five a day” portions of fruit and vegetables, although we do better at buying them than eating them- but this is contributing substantially to waste (and 83% of our fruit is imported)

Answer 21

Consumption of fruit and vegetables remains below recommended daily amounts for a healthy lifestyle.

Question 22

Is the assumption that developing nations will increasingly adopt unhealthy and environmentally damaging changes in diet and waste inevitable or a product of capitalist multinationals seeking to expand their profits-?

Answer 22

paralleling tobacco companies in the expansion of their deadly trades?

Question 23

There are nearly a billion people malnourished in the world because of lack of food, whilst over 2.1 billion are overweight.

Answer 23

Devote 50 times more resources to making weapons than to making a sustainable food supply

Question 24

Global agriculture and food production release more than 25% of greenhouse gas emissions

Answer 24

Almost a billion people suffer from inadequate or insecure food supplies, while 2.1 billion are overweight due to diets high in processed foods, sugars, fats, oils and meats.

Question 25

Production and consumption of food causes about 20% of UK greenhouse gas emissions CO2, CH4, N2O etc.

Answer 25

Eating meat accounts for 43% of these emissions, which are dominated by ruminant emissions.

Question 26

Richer people eat more meat, but also eat more nutritionally ‘empty calories’- the richest people consume 37% of their calories from these unhealthy ‘empty’ sources. – refined sugars, refined animal fats and oils, and alcohol

Answer 26

Greenhouse gas emissions per calorie, per serving, and per g of protein all increase markedly from cereals, vegetables and fruits to dairy, eggs; fish; and meat.

Ruminant-derived meat is by far the most greenhouse-gas intensive form of food

Question 27

Vegetarian and Mediterranean diets rich in leafy vegetables and fruits are significantly more healthy than the global-average diet, and much more healthy than the North American and North Western European diets like in the UK.

Answer 27

If dietary trends continue it is predicted that 2/3rds of the global burden of disease will be due to food intake by 2050.

Question 28

Global changes in diets would hugely reduce the requirement for further expansion of agricultural land into natural ecosystems. Without dietary change ecosystems will almost certainly badly suffer

Answer 28

Current total cropland ~15.6 million km2 = 1560 million ha

Question 29

A good life for all within planetary boundaries

Answer 29

O’Neill Nature 2018

Question 30

Mapping sustainable agro-ecosystems onto sustainable development goals

Answer 30

No poverty
Zero hunger
Good health and wellbeing
Clean water
Responsible consumption and production
Reduced inequalities
Decent work and economic growth
Affordable and clean energy
Climate action
Life on land